updated 06:45 pm EDT, Sat September 17, 2011

Facebook music service to get more partners

Facebook's imminent music service should include more partners than thought. New code exploration from Yvo Schaap has shown that Rhapsody, Deezer, Soundcloud, and Vevo will join those known to be part of the service. MOG, Rdio, and Spotify had been the only services identified before.

The new partners are presumed to have the same unified playback and sharing system. In the model described so far, each service would identify the basics of the song details and pass that along to Facebook both for sharing as well as to allow other services to get that data. Listeners could see music shared from Spotify and get a direct link to play it from Rdio or any other service that has the track available. The service is expected to track plays and possibly inform song recommendations.

Notable exceptions so far appear will include pay per track stores such as Amazon MP3 and iTunes, Schaap said. While not apparent, it's likely that the limitation to primarily unlimited, subscription-based services would be to guarantee access to many more songs without having to spend more to buy each song or album.

Facebook won't directly be competing with iTunes or other services but will be trying to make itself a hub for music as a whole. The absence of major players like Amazon or Apple could skew the music market towards the usually smaller services that have often been struggling to get share. Vevo is noteworthy as it's a frequent partner of YouTube and thus supporting Facebook's frequent rival Google.

Full details are presumed to be coming at Facebook's f8 conference on September 22. [viaSAI]